Oates Novel Is As Marred As Its Subject

July 13, 2003|By KAY CHUBBUCK Special to the Daily Press

Were it not for her tattoos, Alma Busch might have been beautiful. A pale, "boneless," "milky" runaway with fluttering blue eyes and ash-blond hair, Alma is, or could be, quite good-looking, except for a big "iridescent gray-magenta smudge in the shape of a moth" obscuring her face. Similar "scribblings" spill over her neck, shoulders, "belly, buttocks, on the insides of her thighs." These "prison tattoos" scar Alma, damage her, prevent her from being beautiful.

Unfortunately, the same could be said of Joyce Carol Oates' 31st novel. Just as Alma is defaced, so "The Tattooed Girl" is marred by Oates' inability to let go of her trademark Gothic cliches to resolve what is otherwise an incredibly powerful plot. This causes "The Tattooed Girl" to become host to a bizarre collision of narratives: Holocaust memoir meets dime-store thriller. The result is uneven, at best.

This is a shame, as the story Oates tells in "The Tattooed Girl" is certainly worthwhile. Homeless and a runaway, from a poor white-trash background, Alma washes up at a French bistro in the affluent Carmel Heights neighborhood like a bit of human flotsam. She ultimately ends up an assistant to Joshua Seigl, a local writer.

Though baptized, Seigl is widely believed to be Jewish, particularly as his best-selling work is a fictionalized memoir of Holocaust survivors. Alma, as it turns out, is profoundly anti-Semitic. Because of her "boneless" exterior, this goes unnoticed by Seigl, who believes Alma to be placid and caring, if none too bright. Yet as Seigl loses his health to a debilitating nerve disease, the stark truth is revealed, and the relationship that unfolds between them has the potential to be powerful.

It's not.

Coming on the heels of cinematic successes like "The Pianist" and "Life is Beautiful," Oates had the opportunity in "The Tattooed Girl" to produce a serious, nuanced work of fiction about the anti-Semitism that still exists in some pockets of America. Yet rather than delving into the real, human dimensions of her tale, Oates sidesteps the more critical issues she raises, most notably anti-Semitism itself.

Kay Chubbuck reviewed this book for The Baltimore Sun, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.